Thursday, February 23, 2012

PUT ON YOUR BIG BOY PANTS

﻿Bill Boyd Western #20 came out in the month of my birth, December,
1951. Published by Fawcett Comics, it featured the “famous star of
the Hopalong Cassidy movies.” That’s everything I have for you on
this comic book, save that Boyd’s shadow looks sort of weird to me.

Moving right along...

I have been very ill for several days now, but I seem to be on the
mend. At one point during that period, while experiencing painful
vomiting and other unpleasant bodily symptoms, I cracked wise on my
Facebook page and said I hoped some Republican or Tea Party asshat
would come a’soliciting to my door. The implication being I would
then hurl on them. Oh, the offense taken by a handful of asshats.

Put on your big boy pants, you babies. The right-wing has tried to
turn “liberal” into a curse word since the years of Ronnie Reagan,
who, though he has become something of a saint in their ridiculous
rhetoric, is someone they would hate if he were running for office
today. I haven’t given you an ounce of the venom you’ve spewed on
liberals for decades.

I make an effort not to use the word “conservative” in referring to
the right-wing in this country because, though the robo-calls that
come thrice a day to my house keeping talking about “conservative
Republican candidates,” I don’t believe such creatures exist in our
time. Surely real conservatives would link their arms with their
liberal fellow Americans to oppose the agendas of the evil clowns
who have usurped the GOP.

Sidebar. I keep hearing about how liberals have all the money and
use it to “steal” elections. If liberals have money, and some of
them surely must, they aren’t using it here in Medina, Ohio. I’ve
not received one Democratic mailing or robo-call in longer than my
illness-wracked brain can recall. I was going to say that I hadn’t
received one in this election cycle, but I don’t believe there’s an
election cycle anymore. The GOP started running against President
Obama before he was sworn into office.

I’ll be talking more about politics in the weeks to come, but I’ll
give you one more example from my Facebook thread. That would be
the numb-nut whose response to my frivolous post was something like
“And I suppose you think all Democrats are swell fellows?” Which
I didn’t remotely suggest in my comment.

Heck, I didn’t even say I wanted to throw up on all Republicans or
Tea Party members. I singled out “Republican or Tea Party asshats”
who came to my door soliciting. If you aren’t an asshat and don’t
knock on my door, you need not fear my noxious discharge. The only
thing you have to fear is the malignant agenda you’ve bought into.
I suggest a good laxative.

If you’re still with me, your reward is that I’ll now start talking
about comics again.

******************************

This is my year of catching up on Marvel Comics. This involves a
lot of skimming when I hit really bad runs on titles, but there are
also entertaining and even enlightening runs.

Case in point: Wolverine #1-19 [July, 2003-November, 2004]. Greg
Rucka was the writer and I’ve enjoyed enough of his work elsewhere
that skimming these issues was never an option. All these issues
were well written with terrific art by Darick Robertson and Leandro
Fernandez. I liked the first two arcs - “Brotherhood” and “Coyote
Crossing” - more than Rucka’s third and final story, “Return of the
Native” and, with the reading of these issues, came that little bit
of enlightenment noted above.

Wolverine works best without the rest of the Marvel Universe. The
brief cameo appearance of Nightcrawler fit it well with the issues,
but the Sabertooth and Weapon X stuff in the third story arc was a
letdown for me.

Now I may change my mind on this as I get more current with the X-
Men titles - it should be noted that I am only reading Wolverine up
to the “Divided We Stand” X-event. After that, I’ll try following
the X-books in their more or less publication order. However, I’ve
also been reading The Mighty Avengers from just before the “Secret
Invasion” and “Dark Reign” events and Wolverine is not a good fit
there.

For me, the sad thing with The Mighty Avengers is that those issues
are very forgettable. There is the occasional interesting chapter,
but most of them are either padded or come off like a kid playing
with his popular action figures. Even when Dan Slott comes on the
book, the stories strike me as filler waiting for the next “real”
story to come along. I don’t dislike the Slott issues, and I have
several more to read, but they just aren’t capturing my interest asAvengers Academy, Daredevil, and Fantastic Four have done.

More Marvel commentary to come.

******************************

The glorious life of a freelancer. As of this writing, two clients
are late with royalty checks/statements, though they will probably
both cheat me when they finally get around to sending those to me,
and two other clients are late with my government-mandated 1099s.
How come clients are almost never as professional and/or honest as
they expect freelancers to be? Sigh.

******************************

One of the cool things about my life. Getting a phone calls from
one of the best writers of our time and chatting about an obscure
comics character I wrote once. Makes me smile.

******************************

Weird health question that is probably obvious to anyone who knows
anything about health or isn’t do lazy to Google it. Does illness
retard hair growth?

I shaved this morning for the first time in five days. I had less
beard growth than I normally do after a single day.

Is this a common thing or was I abducted by aliens who then erased
my memory? I’m sort of hoping for the latter because I don’t get
out of the house as much as I should.

3 comments:

Mighty Avengers lost all direction after Secret Invasion. Dan Slott writes a certain style, and does it well, but its a style that hasn't suited the Avengers since about 1984. One of the worst runs on a flagship book in recent memory, although it was soon matched by James Robinson's slow murder of Justice League of America v2 (in my opinion).Glad you're feeling better. Just grow the beard, and then existential hair questions won't matterCheers from AustraliaDarryn

I left the Avengers for good and stopped reading them after George Perez left in the mid seventies. I read Avengers on and off for a few years later. My whole comic book addiction came to an end in 1986 when I got out of college and had to make a real living. The last good books, I felt were revalent to my generation were: Dark Knight, Batman:Year One, Crisis on Infinate Earths...got the slipcase Alex Ross cover edition and last but not least the original Watchmen.

Back to the subject of Avengers, the last Avengers story I read was JLA/Avengers by with the art by George Perez. That team up concluded the whole saga, at least to me. All of the new material I see out there I can't relate to any more. It's a clone of a clone of older stories from the past.

If I were in charge I'd have a next generation approach to the characters. Let them get married, and have offspring that would take over for the new generation of Avengers.

I don't know how many fans will agree with me but I am going to take the price of what I'd take to see the new Ghost Rider movie, the new Spidey and Avengers movies and donate it to Gary Freidrich,the creator of Ghost Rider.

I stopped all the Marvel titles a while back because I found myself resenting the fact that I had to buy seven titles to get one story. Not seven issues. Seven titles. From an economic standpoint I understand it, but from a reader on a fixed income (in a field that the asshat tea partiers are actually trying to legislate out of existance- libraries? who needs 'em? everyone has a kindle and a computer and if you don't why should I pay for you to read books. But I digress.) I just gave up. When you start to resent aspects of a hobby, best to cut loose before you turn that inward. Sorry to ramble, but I'm with you, Mr. I.